Most Mexican Americans live in the four states that border Mexico, California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. The areas in and around Los Angeles is home to over six million Mexican Americans.[4] Many of these live in mainly Hispanic neighborhoods such as East Los Angeles. There are also a number of large Mexican American communities in other areas of the Western and Southwestern United States. Though Chicago is not in the Western or Southwestern United States, it has 1.4 million Mexican Americans, more Mexican Americans than any city except Los Angeles.[4] The metro areas of Dallas, Houston, and Phoenix each have more than one million Mexicans. There are a growing number of Mexican Americans in the Midwest and South.

Most Mexican Americans are "mestizos", or of more than one ethnicity. Most of their heritage is the indigenousindios of Mexico, but it often contains other groups, such as Spanish, Italian, Irish and Native American tribes from the U.S. such as Apache.[5][6]